Quotes on Aviation

Fly, dotard, fly! With thy wise dreams and fables of the sky.

The spacious firmament on high,_x000D_ _x000D_ And all the blue ethereal sky,_x000D_ _x000D_ And spangled heavens, a shining frame,_x000D_ _x000D_ Their great Original proclaim.

A sky as pure as water bathed the stars and brought them out.

Of all my accomplishments I may have achieved during the war, I am proudest of the fact that I never lost a wingman.

And the winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.

I started shooting when I was much too far away. That was merely a trick of mine. I did not mean so much as to hit him as to frighten him, and I succeeded in catching him. He began flying curves and this enabled me to draw near.

I have flown in just about everything, with all kinds of pilots in all parts of the world - British, French, Pakistani, Iranian, Japanese, Chinese - and there wasn't a dime's worth of difference between any of them except for one unchanging, certain fact: the best, most skillful pilot has the most experience.

I live for that exhilarating moment when I'm in an airplane rushing down the runway and pull on the stick and feel lift under its wings. It's a magical feeling to climb toward the heavens, seeing objects and people on the ground grow smaller and more insignificant. You have left that world beneath you. You are inside the sky.

The more mechanical becomes the weapons with which we fight, the less mechanical must be the spirit which controls them.

The airplane has unveiled for us the true face of the earth.

I mean, if Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at twenty-two, the history of music would have been very different. As would the history of aviation, of course.

The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.

One cannot look at the sea without wishing for the wings of a swallow.

Nothing makes a man more aware of his capabilities and of his limitations than those moments when he must push aside all the familiar defenses of ego and vanity, and accept reality by staring, with the fear that is normal to a man in combat, into the face of Death.

I was hooked on aviation, made model airplanes, and never thought I would be able to fly myself. It cost too much. But then World War II came along and changed all that.

Air Power is, above all, a psychological weapon - and only short-sighted soldiers, too battle-minded, underrate the importance of psychological factors in war.

To be able to rise from the earth; to be able, from a station in outer space, to see the relationship of the planet earth to other planets; to be able to contemplate the billions of factors in precise and beautiful combination that make human existence possible; to be able to dwell on an encounter of the human brain and spirit with the universe

For all professional pilots there exists a kind of guild, without charter and without by-laws. it demands no requirements for inclusion save an understanding of the wind, the compass, the rudder, and fair fellowship.

Nothing can prevent us from another day and night, and the myth of perpetual flight.

How do you know but ev’ry Bird that cuts the airy way, Is an immense world of delight, clos’d by your senses five?

I realized that the future of aviation, to which I had devoted so much of my life, depended less on the perfection of aircraft than on preserving the epoch-evolved environment of life, and that this was true of all technological progress.